This features comes via The American Surveyor Magazine, June, 2012…
GIS is a powerful tool that is currently being underutilized by land surveyors. This underutilization is costing the surveying industry time during the business day, which equates to wasted money. I am not here to preach that GIS will save the universe from all which is evil. This approach has been used by the existing proponents of GIS with little effect. In my view, GIS is simply a hammer, and if you need to drive nails a hammer is a great tool, but if you are cutting lumber a hammer is useless. The biggest fallacy of the existing users and proponents of GIS is thinking that the professional surveying industry needs to change the way that they conduct business in order to fit into a GIS world. Surveying has been practiced for thousands of years and changing the way that surveying is conducted all because of the invention of a new hammer is crazy. GIS is simply a tool for the professional surveyor to be more efficient, not a new way of doing business.
Having expressed my views, I feel I should introduce myself and my background in both land surveying and GIS. I have a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Geographic Information Science from Texas A&M–Corpus Christi; I am also a Registered Professional Land Surveyor, and a Licensed State Land Surveyor in Texas. I have been working in the surveying industry for just over a decade, and using GIS for almost all of that time.